How effective are AI agents?
AI agents have been sold with the promise of fully automating tasks without the need for step-by-step instructions
Computer systems that can autonomously work on menial tasks have been the promise of technologists – and science fiction authors – for decades. While we’ve dabbled with the likes of robotic process automation and machine learning in the past, the arrival of advanced AI software has put these lofty ambitions back on the table.
According to AI developers, new systems known as AI agents will free up workers as never before, with the ability to autonomously complete tasks based on pre-approved instructions and by contextually processing new data.
What does all this mean for businesses, and how far can AI agents really go? In this episode, Rory is joined by Paul O’Sullivan, UKI CTO at Salesforce, to discuss the potential for AI agents in the workplace.
Highlights
“Agentic AI has far broader ability now. So we're using AI to not just generate text but actually to reason on what the human is trying to achieve, and actually try and understand from that reasoning capability the actions that need to be executed, and then fulfilling that promise by actually allowing the agent to take the action.”
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“When we all looked a couple years back at chatbots and digital channels of engagement with customers to facilitate queries, it was all about deflection. Everybody wanted to deflect from the contact center because our human workers were tremendously overwhelmed. I think our customers, and what I'm seeing now from our customers, is this presents the opportunity not to deflect, but to drive resolution.”
“So when you define the topics, you then need to set the instructions. And these instructions act as the guardrails. For example, don't necessarily talk about a competitor, or always check and verify somebody's email address, or ask them to authenticate themselves. So again, the instructions act as guardrails, and kind of keep that safety net and trust established.”
Show notes
- Why agentic AI will be a huge money-spinner for big tech providers
- Salesforce may have had its ‘ChatGPT moment’ with AI agents – and it will take a lot to knock the company off its perch
- Salesforce CEO wants to “break the hypnosis" coming from major AI vendors in scathing critique of Microsoft Copilot
- Marc Benioff thinks today’s CEOs will be the last to have a fully human workforce – and he's not the only big tech exec predicting the rise of an AI workforce
- AI agent announcements are a dime a dozen right now – here’s what Oracle thinks it’s doing differently
- Slack AI agents shift looks to “unify” enterprise data and drive team synergy
- Google’s Gemini AI models are coming to Agentforce
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